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Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality.

Huston Smith

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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
American
Medical
Show
Spirituality
Religion
University
Shows
Healing
True
Institutions
Government
Learning
Institutionalized
Pretty
Universities
Wonderful
Association

More quotes by Huston Smith

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In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.
Huston Smith
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'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God' suggested to me a heavenly welfare program for the meek. Today that saying reveals an astute insight into egotism, about how those with swollen pride or vanity cannot see anything larger than themselves.
Huston Smith
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In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. It is like the quantum world, where the more we understand its formalism, the stranger that world becomes.
Huston Smith
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I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.
Huston Smith
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I simply wanted to experience the presence of this man who had revolutionized my understanding. After a while we sat in silence, gazing at the barren canyon walls. And the mute desert seemed to carry on our conversation for us.
Huston Smith
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Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us.
Huston Smith
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After his great awakening, the Buddha continued to meditate and to devote himself to others otherwise his vision would have receded into a pleasant memory.
Huston Smith
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...the single destination of sanctity could admit of so many different avenues leading to it.
Huston Smith
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Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like.
Huston Smith
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The notion that Western religions are more rigid than those of Asia is overdrawn. Ours is the most permissive society history has ever known - almost the only thing that is forbidden now is to forbid - and Asian teachers and their progeny play up to this propensity by soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's rules.
Huston Smith
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Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
Huston Smith
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I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith.
Huston Smith
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We become compassionate not from altruism which denies the self for the sake of the other, but from the insight that sees and feels one is the other.
Huston Smith
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I would not say that ethical behavior is not possible for the atheist or agnostic. It is. A couple of pretty good examples are Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. However, I will have to say that if we take the human lot as a whole, these two men must be seen as exceptions.
Huston Smith
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Entheogens are not to be lightly trifled with... However, if taken with the right attitude and in the proper setting, psychoactive drugs may produce religious experiences. ...it is far less clear that they can produce religious lives.
Huston Smith
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Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.
Huston Smith
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God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.
Huston Smith
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The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
Huston Smith
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Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
Huston Smith
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We all carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted, and cannot be destroyed.
Huston Smith